The Two Kings
by WerewolfDoctor
Summary: A few months after Cuba, Erik receives a note. 'Ditch the helmet and I'll join you'. A/U. Slight Charles/Erik. Good either does or doesn't win out, depending on your point of view.


A/N – In this A/U Charles wasn't paralysed. I tried to write it as if he were in a wheelchair, but every time I imagined the story he wasn't, he was just this balled up energy, forever pacing. Besides, I always associate the wheelchair with the calm, sedate, powerful Professor X, which is completely different to the characterisation.

…

The first note was delivered months after Cuba by a slightly bewildered Azazel, _Mind control, really Charles?_ But couldn't help grinning at Charles' audacity.

_Ditch the helmet and I'll join you_.

Erik's glee was tempered only by his surprise. He had never really expected Charles to abandon his dreams for him. Maybe Charles was finally seeing the truth of the world.

_I need the helmet to protect me from Emma. I'll take it off when you get here_.

He thrust the note into Azazel's hand, who looked briefly confused, before disappearing in his signature red smoke. _Charles, I never knew you had it in you_. Charles obviously had a firm hold on Azazel's mind. He ignored Emma's worrying about the possible danger this meant to them. Charles was coming.

_Having trouble controlling your own troops? Tut, tut Erik. Abandon the helmet __and__ the cape, believe me, it's for your own good. The helmet and cape simply look ridiculous, you'd be laughed out of anywhere you went. I'll come as soon as I can feel your mind. You have nothing to fear._

…

_Emma has never followed anything but her own wishes, not even Shaw. If I am to abandon the helmet, you shall have to keep her in line and abandon many of your mighty morals, my friend._

…

_The fact that I am agreeing to join you in this dream shows that I have abandoned my dream already does it not? This, I believe, means that Emma will leave your fine company rather for the reasons you have already stated. She will not stay anywhere where she is not the strongest._

…

_Agreed. We shall rule together._

…

Erik couldn't help wondering what exactly had changed Charles so much in so short a space of time. He hadn't once asked how Raven was, or mentioned the children.

Erik couldn't help but briefly mourn for the passing of Charles' fine dream.

Erik hadn't questioned him when he had come. He knew he would find out at some point, sooner rather than later. There was something boiling beneath the surface and it was only a matter or time before it broke free.

…

It started with Emma. Emma, of course, had tried to invade Charles' mind as soon as he had arrived and Charles had beaten her down quite ruthlessly. Erik doubted that Emma would ever be the same again.

"Just because I don't, doesn't mean I can't," he had told the quivering blonde mess at his feet and walked away. Emma was never seen again. Erik decided not to worry about where she might be or what she might be doing. He had seen how easily Charles had defeated her.

And then it had all come loose, privately, with Erik and Raven. Erik had wondered later whether Charles had been waiting for such a moment all along.

"You know, Erik, I find your manifesto quite hypocritical."

"In what way?" Erik hoped that this would be like their debates of the past, arguing viciously on either side, but never any blood spilt.

"You want freedom for all mutants to use their powers at will, but you never extended this courtesy to me. You asked me, both of you, to stay out your minds, and I did. Even though it was like cutting off a limb, blinding myself, loosing an entire sense."

"You did the same to me," Raven said.

"Because I was trying to protect you. Because I didn't want a repeat of the time when you were almost beaten to death and I had to make them forget! Oh, how terrible of me, how can you ever forgive me?" He leaned in close to Raven, "But you never did, did you? You accused me of not understanding when I understood all too well, but you were too arrogant to see it. You never saw the constant shielding that I did to keep everyone out, even though you were with me when I trained! Wanting forever to reveal myself and let my mind fully extend but never being able to do so because even the Mutant Supremacists hate telepaths! Didn't you ever wonder why I loved Cerebro so much?"

He leant back, "A telepath has no need of trust because he can see every man's darkest thought, but I held back for you. I _trusted_ you both. More fool me. You both left me bleeding in the sand." He turned to Erik, "You begged me to join you, said we were brothers whilst wearing that damn helmet, showing just how little regard you had for me. I was lucky I wasn't killed but you didn't care." Charles visibly calmed himself before saying, "I am joining you, but you need to trust me. There will be no more helmets and you will allow me to stretch my telepathy. Fully."

Charles marched out without waiting for an answer. Perhaps, Erik thought, because it hadn't been any kind of question. It had been a command.

…

He obeyed, of course he obeyed. Erik might have been in charge of the newly named Brotherhood, and Charles quite comfortable as his second, but between the two of them the balance of power presently lay firmly in Charles' corner.

…

It was weeks before Erik asked what happened to the children because he had honestly been quite fond of them, but it was weeks before he thought he could take another bout of Charles' rage.

Charles had, no doubt, been able to hear the question in his mind, but had kept silent. He was thankful for that small mercy.

"Where are the children, now?"

"They all have better places to be. Sean has a family who misses him. Alex is so used to looking after himself that staying in a mansion, looked after by a madman with no real cause to keep him there unsettles him greatly. And so now he has set off to find his younger brother. I have given him the best help I could without Cerebro. Hank now has access to the greatest labs in the world. He's a scientist and a genius. They love him as he loves his labs."

"They accept him even now?"

"People will accept anything if the reward is great enough. If a man is rich enough people will ignore any faults he may have. The same goes for Hank."

"Cynical, for you."

"I was always cynical, my friend, but nobody saw it. It is impossible not to be cynical or optimistic when you constantly see the minds of others. Minds are beautiful and terrible things."

…

Together Erik and Charles, or rather the personas they put on, Magneto and The Professor, were unstoppable. Their first major success together was a lab, which had been experimenting on mutants. They had freed the mutants and burnt the labs.

Charles had screamed because he could feel all their minds burning and burning and burning.

Erik had finally come some way to understanding his aversion to death after that.

They came to an agreement after that. No unnecessary deaths, and if necessary, give Charles warning. Charles had also agreed to 'training' to try and get his mind to cope with death, working upwards from dumb animals.

…

"Why did you join me?" The last question, and the one, Erik had found, that he obsessed over the most. Because even if Charles had given up on his dreams of a school for mutants, why would he join a mission that he had before found utterly repellent?

Charles gave a long pause, thinking. Erik was torn between impatient curiosity and fear.

"Here I am comfortable," he eventually said, "here I can change the world with someone to temper me. I am comfortable beneath the leader." He turned to Erik, almost smiling, "Don't you understand, my friend, we're opposites, you and I. Alone we'd always fail. You must know the problem with your vision; if it ever came to war, as I know you partly want it to, you'd loose. Even if we were equal numbers, the majority of mutants wouldn't want to fight, most of us aren't built for war. You'd loose."

"You are right, my friend, you are good for me. I hope I am just as good for you."

Charles gave a bitter smile. "All my life I have had a nasty habit of taking in strays and trying to make them love me. It has always failed." Erik tried to ignore the sudden tugging feeling he got in his chest. The name 'Raven' went unsaid. Charles turned to face Erik, "I think you're the closest I've ever got."

"I think you're the closest I've ever got as well." As declarations went it was flawed in so many ways, but Erik thought he could deal with it.

"The children," Erik began hesitantly, "they would've grown to love you though."

Charles shrugged, "I gave them a home and a common enemy. The shine would have worn of fairly quickly. It already was; they weren't so reluctant to leave."

…

"You can't forgive me, can you? You can forgive Erik, but not me."

Raven was standing behind him, completely blue, as she always was now. Charles had heard her coming in his mind far before she had appeared, of course, be he only reacted once she had spoken.

"Erik had a reason. A good reason. My little dream was far too fanciful to ever be reality. And you're wrong, it's going to take a long time for me to forgive his leaving me bleeding in the sand, but we're working together again."

"And me?"

"It hurt, because I thought you understood, but you didn't, so you kicked in the final nail and left me. My only friend. There was a time when it was you and me against the world, but it can't be, not anymore."

"I'm sorry, but-"

"No, I'm sorry," Charles felt Raven's surprise as he finally turned to look at her. "I tried to make you into something you're not, and I don't mean your looks," _I tried to make you my friend. My ultimate friend. Us against the world when you wanted to spread your wings,_ he didn't say. He gave a smile instead, "I always thought you looked great in blue."

…

Erik realised rather quickly that Charles was something of an alcoholic. He'd halfway noticed it before Cuba when Charles had almost painfully _not_ had anything to drink. Probably because he wanted to set a good example.

"I come from a long, distinguished line of alcoholics," Charles had told him when he had mentioned it, "you can't change me."

"Never stopped you from trying to change everyone else." _Me._

"Oh my friend, can you really say that you are the same man I pulled out of the sea all that time ago?"

He couldn't. He hadn't been the same after some hopeful, idiotic telepath had found something in _him_ worth fighting for.

"At least allow yourself the same courtesy," Erik said. Charles raised his glass to him, half toast, half agreement. They ended up getting drunk together.

…

They built a new Cerobro. Hank was a genius, Charles told Erik, but he could never have understood, or even imagined a telepath's mind. That was the letdown of the old Cerebro.

They were the perfect pair working on Cerebro, because no one could match Charles theories and blueprints, but Erik could make them reality, with his intrinsic understanding of metal, machines and how things _worked_. He was the only one who could Charles' theories into practice.

…

Sometimes Erik didn't know who was following who. Perhaps it was like Charles said; they were opposites. Magnets.

Erik found himself inordinately pleased at that thought.

…

In the end Erik thought Charles was wrong on one thing. He knew, as Charles had foreseen, that the world could have fought Magneto. The world might've even defeated Magneto, he was not so arrogant as to think otherwise. But nobody, he thought, could have ever beaten the power of The Professor, strengthened by Cerebro and paired with Magneto, no matter their numbers or their might. It was a war they always would've won.

In the end, it was the strangest of wars. Almost no bloodshed.

And Charles insisted that he had not interfered with the freewill of any.

They called them the Two Kings, leaders of this enforced Utopia and almost worshipped with fear and love in equal measure. A place where (at Charles' insistence) humans and mutants lived in harmony. Erik had objected to this and so Charles had merely said, "If it troubles you and you still think mutants are the only ones worth saving, remember that human parents give birth to mutant children."

…

They lived in a palace. They hadn't really asked for one, but they hadn't had much choice in the end. It seemed to go with the job description.

Erik saw Charles emerge from his chambers wrapped in a robe, "How many have you bedded now?"

"To keep count seems rather distasteful, don't you think?"

"Some would say that sleeping with all the world can throw at you, men and women, was just as distasteful," Erik said, mock severely.

"Perhaps. Their bodies are delightful, of course, but their minds are all so exquisitely dull, and it is the mind I am truly attracted to. I have not found a mind even in the plethora of geniuses and artists presented to me that I find myself interested in."

"You used to find my mind interesting."

Charles turned to him, the hint of a smile on his face. "Yes. I did."


End file.
